U.S. Testing Pain Ray in Afghanistan

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And thereâ€™s no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like theyâ€™re on fire.

OK, OK. Maybe that isnâ€™t precisely the logic being employed by those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. Iâ€™m sure theyâ€™re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Talibanâ€™s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive.

Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is â€œin Afghanistan for testing.â€

An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling Danger Room co-founder and AOL News ace Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted â€œblock 2â€³ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasnâ€™t been used in combat.

"We are currently not testing the Active Denial System in Afghanistan," Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, tells Danger Room.

So I ask her: Has it been tested previously? She hems and haws. "I'm not gonna get into operational," Hughes answers.

Hughes also disputes the assertion that Active Denial creates a burning feeling. "It's an intolerable heating sensation," she says. "Like opening up an oven door."]

For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System â€” known as the â€œHoly Grailâ€ of crowd control â€” was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about â€œthe atmosphericsâ€ â€” how the locals might react â€” when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on â€˜em. â€œNot politically tenable,â€ the Defense Science Board concluded.

I pinged Gen. Stanley McChrystalâ€™s staff about the use of Active Denial in Afghanistan. Iâ€™ll let you know if I hear anything back. But a few months ago, a source told me that a representative from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was in Afghanistan. Did that mean Active Denial was about to be put into action? Nope, the source said. â€œSheâ€™s just out getting some atmospherics on the use of non-lethals.â€

â€œThe active denial system is in the country,â€ e-mails Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for Gen. McChrystal. â€œHowever, it has not been used operationally and no decision has been made at this time to deploy it .''